Kodak, Pussy Riot, News Corp.: Intellectual Property

Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Trustee overseeing Eastman
Kodak Co.’s bankruptcy was asked to probe the photography
pioneer’s patent auction by a New York hedge fund, which said
the “unusually secretive” bidding process wasn’t likely to
benefit creditors.

Esopus Creek Value Series Fund LP, which holds Kodak’s 9.75
percent Senior Secured Notes, said press reports about Apple
Inc. and Google Inc. joining forces as lead bidders led the fund
“to be concerned as to the integrity of the bidding process,”
according to a letter e-mailed to Tracy Hope Davis, the U.S.
trustee who supervises bankruptcies in the New York region.

Under bankruptcy law, “we note that the trustee is
entitled to avoid any sale resulting from collusive bidding,”
Esopus said in the letter, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.
The fund cited a Wall Street Journal article on Aug. 16 titled
“Kodak Auction Makes Odd Bedfellows.”

A voice-mail message seeking comment on Esopus’s letter
from Davis at the U.S. Trustee’s office wasn’t immediately
returned after regular business hours. Google doesn’t comment on
“rumor and speculation,” said a spokesman, Jim Prosser.

“The auction procedures were approved by the court, which
also ordered that all parties should maintain confidentiality,
as we are doing,” Christopher Veronda, a spokesman for Kodak,
said in an e-mail.

Rochester, New York-based Kodak said Aug. 16 it was
continuing an extended auction of its digital-imaging patents
and may not sell them if it concludes that creditors will
benefit more if it holds them.

The patents for sale relate to the capture, manipulation
and sharing of digital images. Kodak is selling the patents to
fund a turnaround after filing for bankruptcy in January,
pursuing a plan to shrink the company and focus on printing more
than photography. Chief Executive Officer Antonio Perez is
pushing ahead with the sale amid legal fights with device
makers, including Apple, over the ownership and validity of some
of the patents.

The patents are collateral for a $950 million bankruptcy
loan arranged by Citigroup Inc.

In court documents, Kodak has said the patents may be worth
$2.21 billion to $2.57 billion, based on an estimate by patent
advisory firm 284 Partners LLC. Kodak said it has generated more
than $3 billion in revenue by licensing some of the digital-imaging patents to users, including Samsung Electronics Co., LG
Electronics Inc., Google Inc.’s Motorola Mobility unit and Nokia
Oyj.

The bankruptcy case is In re Eastman Kodak Co., 12-10202,
U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York
(Manhattan).

For Apple-Samsung Jury, More Than 600 Questions Need Answers

The jurors who will decide the outcome of the intellectual-property trial between Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
must answer more than 600 questions simply to get to the end of
their verdict form.

The trial over smartphone and tablet patents, which
concluded yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California,
produced dozens of exhibits, 50 hours of argument and testimony
over three weeks, and a multitude of calculations to arrive at
estimated potential damages of billions of dollars.

That was before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh started
reading 109 pages of jury instructions to guide the nine-member
jury through the labyrinthine 20-page verdict form. The
exercise, done yesterday before lawyers gave closing arguments,
required more than two hours, including court-ordered “stand
up” breaks to make sure everyone stayed alert.

The verdict form is a “whopper,” Stanford Law School
professor Mark Lemley said in an interview. Asking jurors to
parse three different sets of legal rules for the claims at
issue -- utility patents, design patents and trade dress, or how
a product looks -- “will be particularly hard,” he said.

“The jury needs to figure out what category to put each
patent in, and then remember to apply some of the rules”
contained in the judge’s instructions “to some of the patents,
and other rules to other patents,” he said.

Koh said the jury will start deliberating today. Federal
rules require that for either side to win, the jury verdict must
be unanimous.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, sued Samsung in
April 2011, and Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung countersued.
The case is the first to go before a federal jury in a battle
being waged on four continents for dominance in a smartphone
market valued by Bloomberg Industries at $219.1 billion.

Apple alleges infringement of seven of its patents and
seeks $2.5 billion to $2.75 billion in damages. The world’s most
valuable company also seeks to make permanent a preliminary ban
it won on U.S. sales of a Samsung tablet computer, and extend
the ban to Samsung smartphones.

Samsung claims infringement of five of its patents and
seeks as much as $421.8 million in royalties.

The trial, which began July 30, wrapped up yesterday with
two hours of closing arguments by each side.

A lawyer for Apple, Harold McElhinny, said Samsung was so
desperate to catch up with Apple’s smartphones and tablets in
February 2010 that the South Korean company began “three
intense months of copying” the iPhone maker.

Samsung’s lawyer, Charles Verhoeven, framed the jury’s
decision as one that could shape the future of the technology
industry. If the jury rules in Apple’s favor, he said, big
conglomerates with large patent portfolios would stifle
innovation by blocking out competitors.

The jury’s decision “could change the way competition
works in this country,” he said. “Rather than compete in the
marketplace, Apple is seeking to gain an edge in the courtroom.
It’s seeking to block its biggest and most serious competitor
from even attending the game.”

The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 11-cv-01846, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
(San Jose).

For more, click here.

For more patent news, click here.

Trademark

Steelers Settle Suit Involving Italian-Language ‘Terrible Towel’

The Pittsburgh Steelers LLC’s trademark infringement suit
against a seller of Italian-language versions of the team’s
“terrible towel” has settled, according to court papers.

The National Football League team and the Allegheny Valley
School Foundation sued Nicholas Rossi of Rector, Pennsylvania,
in federal court in Pittsburgh Aug. 14, claiming his
“‘Ufficiale di Italia asciugamano terribile Un Oroginale de
Pittsburg’’ infringed the ‘‘terrible towel’’ mark identified
with the team for 35 years.

The mark is licensed to the team and belongs to the
foundation, a nonprofit group that provided services to
intellectually and developmentally disabled people. In the
complaint, the team and foundation said that to no avail cease-and-desist letters were sent to Rossi beginning in June 2011.

They claimed they were harmed by the promotion and sale of
the allegedly infringing towels, both through websites and on
EBay Inc.’s auction site. They asked the court for money damages
and profits derived for the sale of the Italian-language towels,
together with awards of attorney fees, litigation costs and
extra damages intended to punish the defendant for the
infringement.

According to an Aug. 20 court filing, the parties reached
an amicable resolution of the dispute. The court is retaining
jurisdiction of the closed case to enforce the settlement, the
terms of which were not disclosed in the filing.

Sports Illustrated reported that Rossi said made the towels
to raise money for Italian earthquake victims and agreed to
change the design to eliminate the word ‘‘terrible.’’

A federal appeals court last month rejected an appeal of a
trademark-infringement decision involving the same trademark. In
December 2011, a federal court in Pittsburgh found that a T-shirt company that had attempted to register ‘‘The Terrible T-shirt’’ as a trademark had infringed. In that case the company
had actually printed up shirts bearing that mark, according to
court papers.

The T-shirt maker filed an appeal with the 3rd U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals Jan. 10. The appeals court dismissed that case
on July 18, saying no brief had been filed.

The case was AVS Foundation V. Eugene Berry Enterprise LLC,
11-cv-01084, U.S. District Court, Western District of
Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh). The appeal was AVS Foundation V.
Eugene Berry Enterprise LLC, 12-1039, U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Third Circuit.

The newly settled case is AVS Foundation V. Rossi, 12-cv-01159, U.S. District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania
(Pittsburgh).

Pussy Riot Seeking Russian Trademark on Name to Protect Its Use

Pussy Riot, the all-female Russian band sentenced to two
years in jail after its protest in a Moscow cathedral, has begun
the process of registering its name as a trademark, the Moscow
News reported.

Mark Feigin, the feminist band’s lawyer, said the
registration was undertaken to avoid the name of the group being
used for ‘‘all sorts of questionable events and projects,’’
according to Moscow News.

He said the band didn’t mind that their songs were
performed or items were produced using the group’s themes as
long as the proceeds are used to fight the political system’s
shortcomings, the Moscow News reported.

For more trademark news, click here.

Copyright

New Corp.’s Kim Williams Calls for Tougher Copyright Laws

Williams, speaking to the Australian International Movie
Convention, said a high level of piracy is occurring and
Australia’s planned high-speed National Broadband Network will
only exacerbate the problem, according to the Australian.

Williams said the NBN must take responsibility to ‘‘provide
a safe super-highway for our digital economy,” and its mandate
should include taking steps to halt illegal downloading, the
Australian reported.

He claimed in his speech that those who persistently engage
in illegal downloading are much less likely to go to the movies,
or acquire content from legal sources, according to the
newspaper.

Independent News Services Unit Didn’t Infringe, Court Rules

An Indian court ruled that the use of a small portion of a
song in a television broadcast doesn’t constitute copyright
infringement, IndiaTelevision.com reported.

The Delhi High Court ruled in a case filed by filmmaker
Yash Raj Films, which had objected to the use of a portion of
the “Salaam Namaste” song on a program on Independent News
Services Pvt Ltd.’s India TV, according to IndiaTelevision.com.

The court said this minimal use of the content fell into
“fair use” provisions of India’s copyright law, Indian
Television.com reported.

Group Seeks Leave to Argue About Pornography’s Protectability

The First Amendment Lawyers Association has asked a federal
court in Massachusetts for permission to file a friend-of-the
court brief in a copyright case involving films with adult
content.

The Chicago-based association is seeking permission to
address an opinion expressed in an Aug. 10 order about legal
protections afforded pornography. Magistrate Judge Leo T.
Sorokin said that the law is “unsettled’ in many federal
judicial circuits as to whether pornography ‘‘is entitled to
protection against copyright infringement.’’

The brief was authored by Marc J. Randazza of Las Vegas,
who is representing makers of adult-content films in copyright-infringement cases in multiple states. In his request for
permission to file the brief, he argued that the organization
‘‘has been involved in many landmark cases defending erotic
expression and adult entertainment,’’ and has been ‘‘on the
front lines of defending free expression.’’

He also submitted the proposed brief in which he said
pornography is both ‘‘legal and copyrightable, undermining any
notion that it suffers from disfavor under the Copyright Act.’’

The case is Discount Video Center Inc. v. Does 1-29, 12-cv-10805, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts.